On Charity

Life isn’t simple by any means. Where you stand observing an event can color all that you see in a way that separates you from every other observer of the same incident. No two eye witnesses ever see the same thing despite our belief in an objective reality of the moment. Clearly these differences in perception can cause problems.

The actions we take in life, those choices we carry out in our living in this material world, each has a reaction. The immutable laws of physics pretty much demand this. Speaking words out loud in a one on one conversation or even setting them down without speaking on paper or a web page are actions. Every single word we communicate can have impacts and repercussions that last far beyond the moment. The ramifications of words spoken can last long after the air carrying the vibrations from larynx to the bones of the middle ear has ceased its moving.

Today these fingers with which I now type seem to have set in motion ripples that have become much bigger waves, much uglier waves at least on an interpersonal level than I ever anticipated. Consequences will follow and I will live with those consequences; there really isn’t any other choice. I am neither happy nor sad with this state of events. What I am is disquieted and disappointed that the people I spoke to didn’t understand and still don’t seem to understand their actions didn’t pass the smell test.

In so many meetings that I attend the phrase “see the big picture” is used. It is trite jargon. Usually the speakers declare the term is shorthand for progressive thinking or for having a focus on organizational good. But what does seeing the big picture really mean? Literally it means to perceive the broadest perspective of an issue or a situation.

When big picture talk is used in a meeting it is usually part of a persuasive syllogism, one asserting that taking a particular course of action is for the greatest good. Having the skill or foresight to really do big picture thinking accurately would be admirable. Goodness knows I wish at times I truly could move beyond my focus on the acute demands of right here, right now.

Too often the real meaning of “seeing the big picture” is more insidious than those four words would seem to convey. More often than not claims of seeing the big picture are merely a way of rationalizing the abuse of some class of persons for the sake of expediency. Actions that would never be taken if you were face to face with all the involved impacted parties, because these schemes don’t pass the smell test, get pushed through with the bigger picture being the banner followed. Poor choices or bad choices get adopted because a persuasive speaker claims “greater good” of “the big picture” demands it. Simply said jargon overrides reality.

You know the smell test mentioned above is really rather simple. As they taught us in legal ethics (yes it is an oxymoron) if it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Versions have been codified by any number of faiths and philosophies; do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Christianity laid it out in the New Testament with, “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12. Jumping back to ethics class the instructor circled around to the crux of the application of the smell test for new lawyers, “If it is not your money don’t take it.”

Charitable giving is defined as the kind and generous giving of money or other help to those in need. I spent a good time looking up the components of this phrase recently and nowhere did I find a reference that implied it was still charitable giving if you required others to give. This week I called some people out on an attempt to institute mandatory charitable giving. They backed off. However as a result I have been told pretty much point blank that I have hurt children in a material way and that I am selfish and mean-spirited person. Some of the comments hurt me quite a bit.

I am not ashamed of what I have done. In these rough economic times when our region’s unemployment rate is well into double digits and virtually everyone is facing the risk of job loss, or the loss or reduction of job benefits or of a salary reduction, acting to impose a mandatory charitable gift is indefensible. To begin with the demand for payment negates the “charitable” component. Demanding such a payment, no matter what size or how noble the purpose, was wrong.

Those making the decision should have been taking into consideration the bigger picture of the status of the economy as a whole. Clearly they should have at least thought about the timing of their claim for payment in the midst of the holiday season. Right now is a period when large demands are made on all family coffers. This decision truly needed to be based on the broadest perspective of the situation. Big picture thinking it wasn’t.

Do I have regrets in this situation, absolutely. Do I wish this could have been resolved in another manner, again the answer is absolutely. Do I think it was my actions that brought us to this place of conflict? Absolutely not.

I hope that over time the people who are calling me out right now realize that there were two equally valid viewpoints on what happened here. While helping those in need is a noble cause, you can’t do it by executive fiat. Everyone in this economy is hurting; the demands on family budgets are great. To those that came up with this strategy I say this, next time when you consider sticking your hand into someone’s pocket in a tough economic times ask yourself one question. Would I want someone to treat me this way? Next time I think your choice will be different.

To Windsor and Beyond!

From Ambassador Bridge (Michigan): Huron Church Rd. south approx. 4 km to E.C. Row Expressway. Proceed east on E.C. Row Expressway approx. 12 km to Lauzon Pkwy. (North) exit. Proceed north on Lauzon Pkwy. approx. 4 km to Lauzon Line/McHugh Street. Turn right on Lauzon Line/McHugh St. and proceed east approx. 0.75 km to arena on the right.

From Windsor/Detroit Tunnel: Tunnel exits onto Park Street. Turn left on Park St. South and proceed to Ouellette Ave. (1st traffic light). Turn left on Ouellette Ave. and proceed south approx. 5 km to E.C. Row Expressway. Proceed east on E.C. Row Expressway approx. 9 km to Lauzon Pkwy. (North) exit. Proceed north on Lauzon Pkwy. approx. 4 km to Lauzon Line/McHugh Street. Turn right on Lauzon Line/McHugh St. and proceed east approx. 0.75 km to arena on the right.


Important Notes: There are two games. The times are:
• Game 1 – 3:55 pm and
• Game-2 - 8:50pm.
Between games there will be some time for socializing. A hockey pizza party will occur at the Pennacle, 4789 Riverside Dr E Windsor, ON, Use the back entrance of condo building to access the party room.

Crossing the border is always an interesting proposition. It is possible you will be waived through easily, but this is not assured. Build in extra time for delays.

The blog author notes that Saturday is Dim Sum day at Wah Court. The address of this Windsor restaurant and an explanation of Dim Sum can be found at http://www.wahcourtrestaurant.com/.
If you clear the border by 1 p.m. you would still have plenty of time for this delicious midday meal and there would be time for the food to settle before the game.

If you are more of a carnivore, there is always TBQ http://tunnelbarbq.com/

Turkey Tournament Time

We have the potential for tournament play over the Thanksgiving weekend. Two locations stand out as potential sites, Mt. Pleasant and Jackson. An e-mail was sent out by our team manager, Jean Martin. It reads in part:

I need to know from each family if they would be interested in doing a tournament over Thanksgiving? We would do one close to home. I am looking at Jackson and if they are full possibly Mt Pleasant. Both are easy drives and could be fun to test our skills. If you could let me know as soon as possible that would be great.

I looked up the Jackson tournament online. It appears the window to sign up for this closes in the next two or three days. If you have not responded to Jean’s e-mail with a yeah or nay on participation please do so now. In previous years the Jackson tournament was a three games guaranteed event. The blog thinks this could be a great deal of fun. Hey if nothing else this would be a great way for the team to work off some turkey bloat.

I Didn't Remember Dorm Food Tasting this Good.

Afternoon hours are fading into sunset and I am lost in the familiar. Where have I been?

Obviously it is late spring. Green growth is everywhere. Paintings by Howard Pyle sometimes contain a visual hint of the luxuriant foliage that now surrounds me. Maybe there are knights-errant in the wood. Oh that is so stupid it is 1976 and I am on campus. Focus. Focus. Take a breath, focus. Where am I?

Suddenly it is so late and the light is fading, Oh, wait I have already said that. Am I talking too fast? Am I talking too slow? Am I talking too much? What do I sound like? Do you think they can tell? Aw man am I up so totally up shit creek? Breathe.

I am lost. Oh wait I have already said that too. Let’s see its Friday. I know that because I just left a TGIFer on Terrace 1 West Shaw Hall. I was just hanging out with a Steve from my Com major and well we were doing the Friday thing.

Anyway I had been at this TGIF thing and someone was showing me where the floor's Resident Assistant's door had been replaced. Apparently one night some drunk-ass stoner had taken a bowling ball and decided to bowl straight down the hall of the dorm floor. The only problem was there were no bowling pins and the RA's door was where the end of the lane should have been. Apparently the door just kind of exploded when the bowling ball hit it. Bam, crash, boom, rattle, rattle. The way the guys on the floor were telling it, I could see the balloons with these words in them, like on Batman. I mean I could really see this, really.

According to those in the know the room itself was a bit internally trashed from the ricocheting action of the ball. Well anyway it seemed real funny when they were telling it and we looked at the door real hard. The faux wood grain no longer matched any other door on the whole floor and maybe in the whole dorm. Wow was that fucked up. Again according to those in the know the kid who did is out of the dorm and on academic probation. Fuck man we were giggling. Giggling and giggling. Fuck no; we were on the floor rolling in stitches almost unable to catch our breaths from laughing so hard. What the fuck was in that brownie and what the fuck are we doing?

Suddenly people were talking about getting a couple of girls to top off a nude pyramid after dark out by the Red Cedar. More giggling and then we were drinking some brews and honest to God I figured if I didn't head back to the dorm now before dark I would never make it. Hell, I was probably going to miss dinner. Damn am I hungry, I need something sweet. I AM REALLY HUNGRY.

The light was golden as I began this walk along the river. The air was perfectly still. Somewhere somebody had a window open and the starting strains of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells were rolling out into the evening air. Then it was gone and I was humming something else. All evening I have been humming Joni’s Shades of Scarlett Conquering. It came out about a week ago. Man is she going into some different directions with this jazz stuff. I don’t know if all the moon eyed long straight brown haired girls who love that love shit on me stuff she has being doing recently will follow her but I think its great. Focus, where am I?

And the air was cool and wonderful and it was like swimming in a refreshing cold water pond on a hot summer day. As I walk along the river and the light is gentle and retreating and tinting into the most beautiful shades. Night awaits, but not quite yet.

I came into the garden, the garden by the big library, the garden filled with vibrant colors. I came into the garden and the smells were smells of joy and they sent my senses cart wheeling. And I stopped and looked at the flowers and the vines and the light straining itself through the tight spaces between the trees as it tried to find a few last leaves to give life to, to fill with energy. Good energy man that is what it is all about. Sometimes like right now my senses and my mind are blown away by the beauty of this world and there is no other choice for me than to sit down and take it all in. And the night is coming on and the light is receding and somehow though I know I am almost home although I had no idea where home is right now.

Lost I sit on these smooth comforting steps. I am not afraid because I am warm and I am filled with wonder. In the garden, I am a child in wonder. In this garden I sit waiting for the dew to arrive. Be cool. Time will pass and I will get focused. But how much time is enough time? Time will pass and I will know the way. But how much time is enough time?

Sitting here I am part of a greater universe that I have ever been part of, part of a universe greater than I have ever imagined.

Sitting here I am suddenly comforted by a couple of voices I know. It is Wendy and Peggy. And know they are saying stuff like “Are you alright?” It is hard to speak so I shake my head up and down to communicate an emphatic (I hope) yes. What was in that brownie god dammit. Oh they should really get to know how alright I am. They are putting their arms around me and getting me up and helping down this flight up steps. These are really nice steps. And then they help me up the flight of steps on the other side of the garden and then I can see the dorm. It was there all the time. Shit that was easy.

In a couple of minutes we are in the cafeteria catching the end of dinner. Coffee smells so good. It is Friday night so there is some pie left. Right now I want pie. Luckily for me most of the dorm rats are out at Dooley’s still sucking down dime beers. I eat a whole bunch of pie and Wendy and Peggy stay there to make sure I am okay and boy am I ever okay.

On the radio this morning in 2009 I heard that there were some findings that were being made about the kids who grew up at the end of the sixties and the seventies. You know who I am talking about just us kids sitting in the park. Well that growing up thing and the taking responsible jobs thing, those both happened. But the stopping the bad behavior of smoking the dread weed, well apparently it didn't happen.

The part of the story that I didn't get the full details of, my attention span and memories are shot, implied that stoners from the sixties and seventies and still sneaking a great number of tokes and not just now and then. Well surprise, not. Me it has been a couple of decades since I travelled that route. Do I remember it, yes. Do I anecdotally have confirmation of the study, oh yeah. What to do, I am not sure? What to be done? I don’t know. I do know one thing, we have got to keep ‘em off the road when they are stoned.

Another Lie, but this one is piscatorial

A fish flashing silver hangs improbably in midair, at least momentarily. What?

Two days on the train from Wilmington, Delaware have left me dog tired. I am beyond dog tired. My mind is at that point where while I am still on the mental rails I can see not far off to the side the space that lies between sanity and a mental breakdown.

Laying out on the bow of this boat is just the ticket. Face up toward the sky I want nothing more than to be empty, to sleep the deep sleep of justification. The sun is warm on my skin when we pass from beneath the large over hanging trees into sunlight.

My wife to be and one of her soon to be bride’s maids picked me up at the Amtrak Depot in Swampville Florida about an hour and a half ago. From there we drove down to the boat slip on the river.

Did I mention I hate being confined in an airplane so whenever I can I take a train? My train’s arrival was seven almost eight hours after its listed and posted ETA. Scotch whiskey is a good adjunct to an American rail trip to ease the uncertainties of such travel but my bottle ran out about four hours before we actually got in. The ride on the Palmetto was rough and only conversation with my fellow neurotic travelers made it bearable.

Moving slow so as not to hit any manatees this beautiful boat has been working its way up the St. John’s River. I have wanted nothing more than to just pass out here on the warm deck of the bow. Laying here on the skin of this piece of consumer excess touched by the sun’s warmth I could easily be gone into a sleepy reverie.

Everyone else on the boat is in a celebratory mood. My wedding is four days away and the good times have begun. Lonesome George Thoregood is blasting out and vodka and tonic glasses are tinkling from the ice. I am ready for the fermented potato bliss to kick me off into la-la land.

Suddenly and clearly unexpectedly a fish is passing above me. It is a good ten feet out of the water. Dorsal fins, shimmering scales, flat eyes, the whole works; it rockets above me. Am I hallucinating from sleep deprivation, I mean that was just vodka and tonic wasn’t it? Just as quick as it has appeared it is gone from my vision. Fuck it; either it was or it wasn’t real but that doesn’t matter much now at this stage of my descent into the total oblivion of exhaustion.

There are screams.

There is a commotion.

There is a man’s hearty almost wild laughter. The chiropractor who is living with the bride’s maid and who owns this beauty of a boat is almost convulsing with howls of laughter as he looks over his shoulder while steering the boat.. I roll my head from its previously fixed skyward stare and look into the back of the boat. What I see is a spectacle unfolding. One twelve inch long fish is flopping wildly about. Also flopping, and about as wildly, are four naked breasts. Two breasts belong to each of the two women who had brought me to this boat and who are now just commencing to scream like little girls.

The fish was clearly and evidently real. So were the breasts. Apparently after we had commenced our journey, both my wife to be and her friend had decided to sun bath on the back of the boat. Lying on towels they had unhooked the tops of their bikinis. The fish for whatever reason had decided to jump and become airborne just as our boat approached. Clearing me, clearing the windscreen and the fore cabin the critter had slapped its slimy carcass down directly onto my wife’s back. Realizing it was not in Kansas anymore the fish lurched and jumped again landed on the back of the bride’s maid slithering this way and that. Not knowing what the fuck was going on and somewhat shocked the ladies committed to a course of jumping up in semi-undress and engaging in what approximated total pandemonium.

It will be five minutes before they are dressed and calmed down again. Thank God the fish continued its path over the back of the boat and back into the water or the males on board would have had to bludgeon it to death.

It isn’t the breasts that make this scene a classic memory. By this point in life I can draw my wife’s breasts on a sheet of paper from memory. As to the maid of honor, one more vodka and tonic and an encounter at her boyfriend’s hot tub and I probably would have gotten a shot of much more that her firm large boobies. It wasn’t the fish either. What made the scene memorable was that while I was in the fog of sleep deprivations I observed the impact of the absurd on people far more solidly grounded in the real world than I was at the time. I was barely hanging on to consciousness and they were dancing a mad dance of piscatorial origin. Life comes at you that way sometimes.

Awkward in America

Life has been busy. I have been tired. Really I have been working on a couple of pieces. I will post soon. In the meantime a dear friend has presented me with a clipping from the Wall Street Journal. I reprint it here. As most of you know one of my offspring is diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). This article is an interesting take on what is occurring in popular culture relative to ASD. My child’s behaviors are not as extreme as Sheldon’s in The Big Bang Theory, but it is the subtle things we all learn without verbally being taught them that bedevil him. A comment like “Maybe I will see you sometime” doesn’t clue him in that it is really a long term good-bye. Enjoy this article and hopefully I will put something of my own up today.


Lifestyles of the Honest and Awkward Article

By CHRISTINE ROSEN
In a new movie, "Adam," the title character, a quirky loner played by the reliably adorable actor Hugh Dancy, turns his living room into an impromptu planetarium to entertain his attractive but romantically wary neighbor, Beth. Soon he is taking her to Central Park to witness raccoons frolicking in the moonlight, and we are comfortably launched on that predictable cinematic journey wherein the charming oddball woos the beautiful girl.

Predictable, that is, until a few scenes later, when Adam inappropriately announces his own sexual arousal and then confesses to Beth that he suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. Very quickly, our geek ceases to be the typical hero-in-hiding and instead becomes the embodiment of a syndrome only recently recognized by the American Psychiatric Association.

Asperger's is characterized, among other things, by awkwardness in social situations and an inability to read others' body language and social cues. And yet, in "Adam," much of the leading man's appeal comes from his refreshing, albeit sometimes brutal, honesty. For Beth, whose experience with men has thus far been negative, the contrast between the awkward, earnest Adam and her suave but dishonest ex-boyfriend turns Adam's supposed deficiencies into strengths, at least for a time. Despite a compellingly sympathetic portrayal by Mr. Dancy, the movie eventually adopts a heavily didactic tone, launching Adam into the more banal role of the misfit who teaches "normal" people something about life.

Whatever the deficiencies of the film, its release cements a new awareness of Asperger's Syndrome in popular culture. This year the Sundance Film Festival featured an animated movie, "Mary and Max," about an Australian girl and her New York pen pal, who happens to have Asperger's, and HBO is scheduled to release a film next year about Temple Grandin, the animal behaviorist who has written about her experience of Asperger's. In recent years, several memoirs, such as John Robison's "Look Me in the Eye" and Tim Page's "Parallel Play," have explored life with Asperger's. "My pervasive childhood memory is an excruciating awareness of my own strangeness," Mr. Page wrote in an essay in The New Yorker. His is an emotionally poignant assessment of the condition: "After fifty-two years, I am left with the melancholy sensation that my life has been spent in a perpetual state of parallel play alongside, but distinctly apart from, the rest of humanity."

Although the CBS television show "Big Bang Theory," a situation comedy that follows the travails of four brilliant, geeky young scientists, isn't explicitly about Asperger's Syndrome, several of its characters act like "Aspies," as those diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome often refer to themselves. Sheldon, a germaphobe who spends his leisure time playing Klingon Boggle and who maintains a strict daily routine, is the most likely (Aspie and not unlike his hero, Spock, from "Star Trek"). The show follows the men's efforts to navigate the treacherous world of normal social interaction, pertly embodied by Penny, the bottle-blond waitress who lives across the hall. She finds this passel of uber-nerds alternatively charming and exasperating. The conceit of the show is that neither Sheldon nor his friends see themselves as especially strange. On the contrary, in a geek-heavy community of physicists, the show suggests, many brilliant people hover on this end of the social spectrum. The comedy comes not from their realization of this fact, but from their strenuous refusal to recognize it and become "normal."

This approach is less forgiving for women. Simon Baron-Cohen, who directs the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, argues that autism-spectrum disorders such as Asperger's are expressions of the "extreme male brain." Indeed, four times as many men as woman are diagnosed with the condition.

The mother of one of the characters on "Big Bang Theory," a brilliant neuroscientist and Aspie-like woman played by Christine Baranski, is, like the empathy-challenged men, the source of many jokes. But whereas their foibles are also ostensibly part of their charms, her lack of maternal feeling casts her as unfeminine and thus far more freakish, like scientist Harry Harlow's classic wire monkey experiment come to life.

Why are we seeing more portrayals of Asperger's Syndrome in popular culture? Increased awareness and diagnosis of conditions along the autism spectrum is one reason. But we are also in the early stages of a debate about whether autism-spectrum conditions are disorders to be medicalized (and, presumably, cured) or merely more extreme expressions of normal behavior that we should treat with greater tolerance. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that this awareness is also because our culture needs people with Aspie-like talents, such as better memorization and calculation skills and a keen desire to assemble and order information, even as it continues to stereotype them for their social deficiencies. In a recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mr. Cowen chastised his academic colleagues for promoting negative views of people with autism-spectrum conditions, particularly the notion that these conditions should be treated as a disease that exacts high social costs.

On the contrary, Mr. Cowen calls people along the autism spectrum the "'infovores' of modern society" and argues, "along many dimensions we as a society are working hard to mimic their abilities at ordering and processing information." In a world awash in distracted people desperately (and unsuccessfully) trying to multitask, Mr. Cowen says, Aspies' ability to focus on detail is a profound advantage. This is particularly true in academia, he argues, where "autism is often a competitive advantage rather than a problem to be solved."

Mr. Cowen's relentlessly optimistic view glosses over some of the serious personal and professional challenges that people who have autism-spectrum conditions face. Still, like the films and books that have emerged in recent years, Mr. Cowen's call for us to embrace a more liberal notion of achievement by recognizing in conditions like Asperger's a kind of "neurodiversity" rather than merely a disorder is compelling.

Our interest in Asperger's and the challenges it poses to our notions of normal behavior comes at a peculiar cultural moment. As traditional social norms and old-fashioned rules of etiquette erode, we are all more likely to face the challenge that regularly confronts people with Asperger's: What rules apply in this social situation? In a world where people routinely post in excruciating detail their sexual preferences on their Facebook pages, is it really so shocking to have someone note his own sexual arousal in idle conversation? Unlike Facebook oversharers, Aspies are not intentionally flouting social conventions. Quite the opposite. In "Adam," Mr. Dancy's character must relentlessly practice in order to master the mundane social interactions of a standard job interview. Tim Page notes that it was his chance discovery of Emily Post's etiquette book that revealed the rudiments of social behavior that had previously eluded him.

Also, our interest in Asperger's comes at a time when we are enthusiastically hunting for the genetic basis of what makes us biologically different from each other—why some of us are more prone to certain physical ailments and others are gifted in music, for example. And yet, our search for the source of difference will, in many cases, end in an effort to eradicate that very difference, particularly if it causes obesity, depression or violent tendencies. Will a society that accepts Asperger's now be as tolerant of it in a future where we might have the power to eliminate it? Let's hope so. As these movies and books suggest, we are all searching for the same ineffable thing: connection to another human being who accepts our quirks, diagnosed or not, and loves us all the more for them.

—Ms. Rosen is senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.

Simplicity in All Things

Sometimes as I work my way back through A Year with Thomas Merton for the umpteenth time a passage strikes me as new, as fresh. A prime example follows. “No matter how simple discourse may be, it is never simple enough. No matter how simple thought may be, it is never simple enough. No matter how simple love may be, it is never simple enough. The only thing left is the simplicity of the soul in God or, better, the simplicity of God”.

I try and write every day. Part of the function of my writing is to focus my mind for the tasks the day ahead will require. The other part of the function is work through my hopes, my petty frustrations, my memories and my loves, putting some part of them into a verbal box. To write well is for me a struggle. There are plenty of people out there who have advice. Some people demand you pay for their advice and some are willing to tell you their opinion gratis. I tend to gravitate toward the free stuff.

All that I read about the craft of writing that has meaning comes down to several short declarative sentences. The first among these the urging that you chose words wisely. That adage is buttressed by these two; use simple words and use words that fit. I think Merton’s sentences are the ultimate distillation of those maxims. What I and what everyone who writes is trying to do is to capture God, or some part of the eternal on paper. It is only in simplicity we come close. Well, we come as close as we ever will. However when I think on Merton I wonder if maybe, I should remain silent and just experience the presence of the divine.